Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

monterail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 150 posts

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#21

Post by mulmen »

spystath wrote: post #15

I get it that Thunderbird looks unhip but I feel like the heavily padded lines waste too much space. The gmail "compact" setting is a much better compromise between space and legibility. But unless they move Thunderbird to WebExtensions (which would be a total productivity disaster) it can always be modded. Although an UI update is always welcome there are more important issues to address in Thunderbird, like better…

I disagree that UI updates are always welcome. I subscribe to the "interfaces are not intuitive they are familiar" school of design. It may look dated and maybe it does need an update but I hope the motivation is to improve productivity and not just to be hip.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#22

Post by Silhouette »

kleiba wrote: post #16

A sign of me being officially old: I like Thunderbird the way it is. Really. For what I want to do with it, it's just fine, so I'm rather scared of that potentially getting screwed up with a UI redesign. (obligatory xkcd link: https://xkcd.com/1172/ )

I couldn't agree more.

There are some enhancements to functionality and some bug fixes that would be helpful in Thunderbird, and security fixes are always welcome. However, this is essential software that I rely on for serious work. It doesn't need to be flashy. It doesn't need a UI overhaul that shifts things around for no particular reason and almost certainly breaks things that matter. It just needs to work, reliably and unobtrusively, and not mess anything up.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#23

Post by saulrh »

They're cheating on the screenshots in the survey. The "current thunderbird" screenshot is taken at half the resolution (or twice the font size) of the "thunderbird redesign" screenshot, giving their redesign twice as much space with which to display the same information. Obviously it's going to look better with that advantage. I'm not sure exactly what it'd mean to "trust" a user interface, but I'm definitely sure I wouldn't trust any of that survey's data.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#24

Post by SyneRyder »

mrweasel wrote: post #5
johnchristopher wrote: post #2

Great. Can we have multiple lines per mail in the mail column or is that still not possible ? /rant

What does that even mean? What mail column?

Presumably the column with the list of emails in the currently selected inbox. (2nd column from left.)

Some email clients have multiple rows of information in that column - the first row might have name & subject, the next row might show the first two sentences of the email. Or it might have the subject on a separate line, so the column can be kept narrow but still show the full subject line.

Think of the iOS Mail or Android GMail interfaces, for example.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#25

Post by cs702 »

bhauer wrote: post #17
cs702 wrote: post #7

Former Thunderbird user here. Much more important than shiny new UI, what I'd like to see is seamless out-of-the-box syncing with online calendars and contacts . (At one point, I tried all the available add-ons for syncing with Google's apps; none of those add-ons worked well for me.)

Importantly, since this is a Mozilla project, that service should be self-hostable [1] to disintermediate the multi-device synchronization platform. It should not be necessary to have a third-party observe all my contacts and calendars. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/

If Mozilla ever were to offer a paid calendar-and-contacts online service, powered by open-source code, and backed with strong customer/data/privacy protections, I would sign up.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#26

Post by Silhouette »

qznc wrote: post #10

A redesign is a great symbolic move to fight "Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant". Still, Thunderbird needs a bigger vision. What does Thunderbird want to be? The cross-platform Outlook? Then merge Lightning into core. The native Gmail? Then get a conversations view. The backwards-compatible, easy, and secure mailer? Then merge Enigmail into core or make SMIME easy to use or get s…

"Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant"

Some of us spell that "stable and reliable" and consider it the single most important property of our essential day-to-day software. If it ain't broke...

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#27

Post by cmiles74 »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #11
mwambua wrote: post #3

Sounds awesome! I'm pretty happy with Thunderbird as is, but a modern interface potentially means more users... and hopefully as a result, a longer life. Here's a quick link to the survey: https://thunderbird-design.typeform.com/to/f7wiiq?utm_referr...

Those survey questions are completely irrelevant to interface design. I use TB every day as my main private mail client and the picture they show me doesn't even look like what I use. Then they ask a bunch of marketing BS questions that have absolutely nothing to do with usability. I hope these people stay the hell away from my favorite mail client.

I installed Thunderbird on a new machine last week and that screenshot is pretty close to the default setup.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#28

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Silhouette wrote: post #26
qznc wrote: post #10

A redesign is a great symbolic move to fight "Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant". Still, Thunderbird needs a bigger vision. What does Thunderbird want to be? The cross-platform Outlook? Then merge Lightning into core. The native Gmail? Then get a conversations view. The backwards-compatible, easy, and secure mailer? Then merge Enigmail into core or make SMIME easy to use or get s…

"Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant" Some of us spell that "stable and reliable" and consider it the single most important property of our essential day-to-day software. If it ain't broke...

In that case, we would all still be using Pine.

Re: Thunderbird Starts Working on Improving Its Interface

#29

Post by moonbug22 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
Silhouette wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thunderbird’s key problem is being perceived as either dead or stagnant" Some of us spell that "stable and reliable" and consider it the single most important property of our essential day-to-day software. If it ain't broke...

In that case, we would all still be using Pine.

Some of us are.
Post reply on HN